Time

35 minutes

Taste ranking

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The Cooking Process:

1

Step One

Preparing the squash – to get started, I preheat the oven to 450°F, placed a medium pot of water and brought it to boil. When I started preparing all the veggies, everything was super fresh and premium-grade quality. After washing and drying the fresh produce, I placed the sprigs of rosemary and the squash on a sheet of foil and lightly drizzled olive oil and seasoning over it. After roasting and gently stirring for 23 minutes, the squash finally came out nice and browned. Tender to the touch, I removed it from the oven and discarded the rosemary herbs.

2

Step Two

Preparing rest of the ingredients – While the squash was busy cooking, I chopped up the kale, walnuts and garlic.With Blue Apron, you get the whole garlic for all the dishes, not separate cloves of garlic for each individual dish. Luckily, I had lots of energy so I didn’t mind cutting it up and getting it all ready. I removed the rosemary leaves from their stems, and chopped them up finely

3

Step Three

Cooking the pasta – The next part of the cooking process was the pasta. I added the pasta into the boiling water and cooked for about 10 minutes and drained it. The pasta was out of this world. This is not your typical store-purchased pasta – this is the real McCoy

4

Step Four

Preparing the brown butter walnut – This was an amazing part of the recipe, and one that got my taste buds singing and dancing. I simply browned the butter while mixing the walnuts in, Added the rosemary and cooked for about 2 minutes.

5

Step Five

Cooking the kale – By this stage, everything was starting to take shape. Next up was the kale, which I cooked with half a cup of water and red pepper flakes. Remember the verjus? Now it’s time to put it in and let it simmer.

6

Step Six

Plating and serving – Once everything was prepared, I plated the dish with the cooked pasta, the roasted squash and the other aromatic ingredients. I played around with the water to get the consistency just right. The brown butter walnuts made it all amazingly decadent, and the cheese finished it off well.

On a personal note:

I decided to make this dish as part of the Thanksgiving Dinner, and it was a great dish! Adding capers and verjus blanc (which is white grape juice) is not something I would ever think of adding to a pasta.

But I was pleasantly surprised!

It added a definite delicate ‘sour edge’ to the dish – that’s what I love about using the meal kits service – it expands your horizons by introducing you to new ways of cooking! The finishing touch with the buttered walnuts was also amazing – and it created a fragrant buttery-nutty aroma in the house.

Let me tell you guys, I was delighted when I opened the Blue Apron box and found all of the ingredients ready to go. There were 3 recipe pages with all the steps laid out for me. And it’s nice that you get to see what everything looks like once it’s done.